It is hard
on your soul
to admit
how often
you have
been full
of ****.

The coffins are sailing to a port near you.
Consider their lovely, dark sails.
how perfectly they catch the wind of death,
Think of them as bringing you precious gifts
on the Christmas Morning of Doom.
Forget the card. Be the first to unwrap yours.
Don't be concerned about returning it.
You can be sure it will fit you perfectly.

Hold the feathers.
Soon enough
the earth will turn
and it will be
tomorrow
in the only world
I am certain of.
I do not require
anything more
than that.
   ~mce

You cannot buy the revolution.You cannot make the revolution.You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit or it is nowhere.
   ~ from *The Dispossessed

This tiny apartment,
snug as a coffin,
claustrophobic as a tomb,
just large enough
to be a staging area
for the real thing.

Poised on the knife's
edge between old and
too old. It is easy to
count up my misses.

I know now I'll
never get a PhD,
win a Nobel Prize,
discover a
Quantum particle
or find True Love.

It's just too late.

I am broke, old,
not very handsome
and slouching
towards inevitable
decay.

           No matter.

I have always been
better at life on paper
than living in the
world of phenomena.

Never keep score
on your life.

Don't mean nothing:

what counts is
not simply winning,
but learning the game,
loving the game,
playing for keeps,

and dying like
the man or woman
you are proud to be.

  ~mce

How To Speak Poetry**

Take the word butterfly. To use this word it is not necessary to make the voice weigh less than an ounce or equip it with small dusty wings. It is not necessary to invent a sunny day or a field of daffodils. It is not necessary to be in love, or to be in love with butterflies. The word butterfly is not a real butterfly. There is the word and there is the butterfly. If you confuse these two items people have the right to laugh at you. Do not make so much of the word. Are you trying to suggest that you love butterflies more perfectly than anyone else, or really understand their nature? The word butterfly is merely data. It is not an opportunity for you to hover, soar, befriend flowers, symbolize beauty and frailty, or in any way impersonate a butterfly. Do not act out words. Never act out words. Never try to leave the floor when you talk about flying. Never close your eyes and **** your head to one side when you talk about death. Do not fix your burning eyes on me when you speak about love. If you want to impress me when you speak about love put your hand in your pocket or under your dress and play with yourself. If ambition and the hunger for applause have driven you to speak about love you should learn how to do it without disgracing yourself or the material.

What is the expression which the age demands? The age demands no expression whatever. We have seen photographs of bereaved Asian mothers. We are not interested in the agony of your fumbled organs. There is nothing you can show on your face that can match the horror of this time. Do not even try. You will only hold yourself up to the scorn of those who have felt things deeply. We have seen newsreels of humans in the extremities of pain and dislocation. Everyone knows you are eating well and are even being paid to stand up there. You are playing to people who have experienced a catastrophe. This should make you very quiet.  Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Everyone knows you are in pain. You cannot tell the audience everything you know about love in every line of love you speak. Step aside and they will know what you know because you know it already. You have nothing to teach them. You are not more beautiful than they are. You are not wiser. Do not shout at them. Do not force a dry entry. That is bad ***. If you show the lines of your genitals, then deliver what you promise. And remember that people do not really want an acrobat in bed. What is our need? To be close to the natural man, to be close to the natural woman. Do not pretend that you are a beloved singer with a vast loyal audience which has followed the ups and downs of your life to this very moment. The bombs, flame-throwers, and all the **** have destroyed more than just the trees and villages. They have also destroyed the stage. Did you think that your profession would escape the general destruction? There is no more stage. There are no more footlights. You are among the people. Then be modest. Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Be by yourself. Be in your own room. Do not put yourself on.

This is an interior landscape. It is inside. It is private. Respect the privacy of the material. These pieces were written in silence. The courage of the play is to speak them. The discipline of the play is not to violate them. Let the audience feel your love of privacy even though there is no privacy. Be good ******. The poem is not a slogan. It cannot advertise you. It cannot promote your reputation for sensitivity. You are not a stud. You are not a killer lady. All this junk about the gangsters of love. You are students of discipline. Do not act out the words. The words die when you act them out, they wither, and we are left with nothing but your ambition.

Speak the words with the exact precision with which you would check out a laundry list. Do not become emotional about the lace blouse. Do not get a hard-on when you say *******. Do not get all shivery just because of the towel. The sheets should not provoke a dreamy expression about the eyes. There is no need to weep into the handkerchief. The socks are not there to remind you of strange and distant voyages. It is just your laundry. It is just your clothes. Don't peep through them. Just wear them.

The poem is nothing but information. It is the Constitution of the inner country. If you declaim it and blow it up with noble intentions then you are no better than the politicians whom you despise. You are just someone waving a flag and making the cheapest kind of appeal to a kind of emotional patriotism. Think of the words as science, not as art. They are a report. You are speaking before a meeting of the Explorers' Club of the National Geographic Society. These people know all the risks of mountain climbing. They honour you by taking this for granted. If you rub their faces in it that is an insult to their hospitality. Tell them about the height of the mountain, the equipment you used, be specific about the surfaces and the time it took to scale it. Do not work the audience for gasps ans sighs. If you are worthy of gasps and sighs it will not be from your appreciation of the event but from theirs. It will be in the statistics and not the trembling of the voice or the cutting of the air with your hands. It will be in the data and the quiet organization of your presence.

Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you're tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty.

by Federico Garcia Lorca*

The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
Useless
to silence it.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for distant
things.
Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.
Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.
Oh, guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords.

Someone once said,
"Vietnam is
the great, epic poem
of our generation."

The greatest epic poem
ever written about war
is Homer's Iliad.

So I wondered,
which character
would I be?

Agamemnon? Too pompous.
Achilles? Too deadly.
Odysseus? Too crafty.
Paris? Too dishonest.

Hector, of course.

Destined to fight on
in a lost cause;
his death inevitable,
already foretold;
courage in the face
of doom.

Hector. I like that.
It has a bold ring
to it.

Maybe I'll change
my name.

  ~mce

An Uncomfortable Poem.*

Kicked your dog? Beaten your wife, husband, kids?
Cheated on your spouse, your taxes, a test? Cursed god?
Had *** to get something? Done a *******? A babysitter?
Shot ******? Been a secret alcoholic? ****** to inflict pain?
Sold drugs, your integrity, your body? Been *****? ***** someone?
Bullied a weaker soul? Kicked someone already down?
Betrayed a confidence, a lover, a coworker, your country?
Hit and run? Been in prison? Stolen money, credentials, a poem?
Alienated your partner, your children, the world?
Killed someone in a battle, a street fight, by accident?
Broken a heart on purpose? Been cruel? Lied for advantage?
Walked away from another’s pain? Sold out love? Spurned it?
No? Never? Not one? Not once? Really? Perhaps you are a Saint.
Only one person knows these things for sure.
What we leave out becomes our Gothic narrative of secrets.
The wheels within our wheels within our wheels. Churning.
   *We are what we choose to reveal. Only that, no more.
    Everything else hidden behind a closed, locked door.

Gee, You’re So Beautiful
   That It’s Starting to Rain**

Oh, Marcia,
I want your long blonde beauty
to be taught in high school,
so kids will learn that God
lives like music in the skin
and sounds like a sunshine harpsichord.
I want high school report cards
     to look like this:

Playing with Gentle Glass Things
     A

Computer Magic
     A

Writing Letters to Those You Love
     A

Finding out about Fish
     A

Marcia’s Long Blonde Beauty
     A+!

"Would you like to save the world from the degradation and destruction it seems destined for?  Then step away from shallow mass movements and quietly go to work on your own self-awareness.  If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself.  If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself.  Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation."

The Cosmos is deaf,
mute, and dumb, too.

We humans make up stories
and call them our lives.

When the stories
don't turn out well,
we curse the Cosmos.

Such hubris!

The Cosmos can't hear
our pathetic laments
and wouldn't care
if it could.

It's too busy just
being the Cosmos.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
      From: *The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

The whiskey bottle is empty.
Now there is a sufficiently
sad sentence. Succinct, too.
It speaks a grave-side quiet,
as when emptiness is all.
The whiskey bottle is empty.
Five words leading only
to a garbage can.
The whiskey bottle is empty.
The simple, declarative,
syntax of nothing.

   - mce

Her dress lay in a heap
on the cat furred floor.
A smile of satisfaction
spread across her face.
Having done this
time out of mind,
I knew it was my turn
to say something tender,
but my tumescent lips
just can't winkle out
pretty lies anymore.

  ~mce

No matter the decoration,
they remain bleak as Antarctica,
empty as the Sahara.
Stuff will not suffice;
bric-a-brac remains invisible.
Even the best music merely echoes:
Mozart, Vivaldi, even Beethoven
cannot fill the emptiness.
Clocks clang like church bells
and every muted footfall
screams out loneliness.
They are places to pass through
where you reside but do not live.
Even the most asinine Realtor
couldn't call them home
with a straight face.
They are the shelter for those
who have not quite descended
to the bridge abutment.
They are where you wake up
alone into loneliness
and pretend each morning
you are still alive.
They are the difference
between survival and life,
breath and inspiration.
They are the preordained
end of the game
you were forced to play
and doomed to lose.
We each get but one home
and if by folly or disaster
we destroy it,
wherever we go
we remain homeless
in the wilderness
of rented rooms.

   - mce

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace**

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

Wandering through
this electronic age
where no one offers
me sustenance,
I never give up
trying to feed them
poetry.

  ~mce

Waking up
where
you don't
want to be;
slice it
as you like
baby,
sounds like
prison
to me.
  ~ mce

“I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”* ― François Rabelais

You didn't notice when it happened,
but with age death has found you out
and stalks you like a mad cassowary.

Wherever you look it looks back.

You think of your mother,
slobbering, shrunken, demented,
dead long before she knew it;
the father you haven't spoken
to in years, alone in a nursing home,
rotting and uncomprehending.

You recall the perfect ******* of
the wonderous first girl you loved,
become an old woman, then immolated
by cancer, chemo, radiation,
reduced to a heap of ashes in an urn.

You hear of a friend's son's untimely
passing and though you haven't
seen your friend in 25 years your
spine tingles with sorrow for a full week.

The smashed white cat on the blacktop
you would not have noticed 20 years ago
brings your heart to a full shivering stop;

the wet half fallen leaves sway like
fragile tombstones in the darkened
autumn trees, whispering your name.

          Doom sits upon you shoulder
like a pirate's parrot and sees all
through your eyes.

          You lost your fear of
dying 45 years ago in a forgotten war,
believed it meant nothing, it didn't,

but now the reaper has returned to cast
his chill on everyone and everything
before you.

He scatters his reminders everywhere.

          And you know that once again
you find yourself trapped deep within
the valley of the shadow of death,
alone, but you are no longer the meanest
******* in the valley.

          It's enough
to make you want to believe in a god of mercy,
but it's far too late for divine intervention,
god is dead and mercy is granted to no one.

Soon enough you will stumble into that
final ambush and the bullet with your name
on it that has followed you since birth
will find you and come to rest and the
contract made with your first breath
                     will be fulfilled.

In the end,
                we all look
                                 into the Tiger's eyes.

  ~mce

life is but a dream...*

Lithuanian speaking parrots
dangle alluringly toxic grapes,
but you breakfast on hyacinths
and suddenly turn cruel in April.
Seductively sleepy lidded women
grip you with invisible fangs
squeezing away any latent lust.
Your cat silently reads your will
licking his sharp, sodden chops.
The IRS sends you an inviting
prison manufactured Christmas card.
The car you can't drive finds a
new owner on Craig's List and
leaves you stranded and alone.
Unable to reach the grocery store,
you will choke on frozen burritos.
Your good cholesterol joins the plot,
turns bad, and conspires to ******.
Lowly earthworms dug for fishing
mutate into malevolent Blacks Mambas.
AARP hounds you to rejoin
no matter how many times you move.
Your high-speed Internet connection
devolves into a slow, taunting swamp.
Your toenails just won’t shut up.
The sun rises suspiciously late.
And you've only been awake an hour.
Could be a very long day.

At some point,
like Jeanne d'Arc
at that crucial moment,
you must trust the fire
and step in.
- mce

up country Laos, 1972*

I won't do it, I said. I won't.

It's a direct order, he said.

We stood a few yards apart,
in front of the blasted wire
where the screaming
enemy wounded
were caught like stuck flies.

It had been a long night
of attack and repulse;
the howling wounded
were all that remained.

He was maybe thirty,
an Ivy League ***** wannabe;
I was just a battle weary broken
20-year-old with no silver spoon.

You will get your *** out there
and tap those moaning *****
and you will do it now, another order.

I said, I'm a medic, not a murderer.
They are prisoners. There are lines,
even here. I will not cross this one.

**** lines. What you are, he said, is a *****.

In his hand, a lethal black 9mm Beretta;
in mine a 1911 model Colt 45 automatic.

Both loaded. Both ready to speak. Both angry.
Both anxious. Both with something to say.

You aren't my CO. You're not even an officer.
I refuse, I said. ******* and the Company.

My hand tensed on the 45. The Beretta quivered.

We looked at each other, working out the odds,

Death, for one of us, seemed only a few seconds away.

But he hesitated, lowered his weapon.

It's ******* like you who lost this war, he said.

And it's mad men like you who started it, I replied.

He turned and walked out to tap the wounded,
one by one, ****** after ******.

Delighting in revenge.

I walked back to the chopper, gun in hand,
and nodded to the pilot. We flew away,
at first to more war, but then back to the world,

the world that could never, ever be the same.

~mce

If you knew how much
I want you, you might
run away from my arms
as from a trap.

But mine is not the desire
of possession, ownership
or of "making you mine."

I want us to be
partners in passion;
eyes trading glances,
lips trading kisses,
hands trading caresses.

I want us to be lovers
who share each other
freely and equally,
as the sun and moon
share the same sky
and through their sharing
make it more beautiful.

Two souls intertwined
in a magikal embrace,
testing the limits
of time and space.

  ~mce

The only way to discover
the world's true Knowledge
is to suffer and beg for it,
otherwise when it jolts your head
you will think it is only
rotten fruit dropping
from the branches
of the tree of good and evil.

   ~mce

"If everything
you thought you knew
makes your life unbearable
would you change?"*

A cool spring morning,
trees explode
with life and color.

I sit and meditate.

Everything I have
ever been,
everyone I have
ever known,
has brought me
to this exact
perfect moment.

Sitting with
this new life,
with my new life,
among these new leaves
and blossoms,
I know I will change
and remain the same.

Sure of nothing
and everything.

Sitting exactly
in this right place,
sitting exactly

where I am.

  ~mce

The girl in the checkout line
ahead of me is dangerously gorgeous.
In the way of the very young,
she insouciantly wears next to nothing.

I imagine myself twenty-one.
I would finagle a way to meet her.
We would fall in love.
We would make love. We would make
even more love and so on.
I would buy her a house, appliances,
a minivan. We would have two
teenaged daughters who would loathe me.
I would take out a second mortgage
to pay for their braces, clothes,
educations and weddings and divorces.
They would move away and rarely see me.

I would come to rest in some
******* of a nursing home wondering
who I am and what the hell happened.

Then she turns and walks out of my life.

I pay for my frozen pizza and cigarettes
smiling about just how lucky I am.

  ~mce

It takes courage to live in a world
that doesn't love you.
But it takes a warrior's heart
to love it anyhow.

  ~mce

The cosmos are deaf,
and mute, too.

We are the beings
who strut about
muttering words
we turn into stories.

We then call these tales
our lives and blame
them on the cosmos.

The cosmos can't hear
our pathetic laments
and wouldn't care
if it could.

It is too busy
just being the cosmos.

  ~mce

To stand alone
before the Burning Bush.

No Jesus, no Buddha,
no Muhammad,
no intercessors.

To stand alone
before the Burning Bush,
to hear the Voice,
feel the Fire,
to be penetrated
by its Light.

Madness,
enlightenment,
realization,
revelation.

To stand alone
before the Burning Bush.

To become One
with the Am that Is.
  - mce

Give the suckers what they want.* PT Barnum

Vibrating condoms that stay hard when you can't.
Pigeons that don't ****. Invisibility cloaks.
Parents with a mute button. Happy nightmares.
Politicians with Pinnochio noses. A ******* app.
Self-repairing cars. Seduction lie detector.
A time machine. Mind reading headset. Hope.
****** pills. Portable STD scanner. Edible cups.
Gourmet cook robot. Sincerity meter. Honesty.
Gun gloves. X-ray specs, Teleporter. Laughter.
Anti-loneliness inhaler. Broken heart tape.
Complete do it yourself dental care kit.
Many other brightly colored useless objects.
Find an Angel. Do a start-up. Go public.
The American Dream: have more money than god.

  ~mce

Consider my arms your refuge.
You are always welcome
and always safe there.
Come into my arms and
I will come into you.
Separate, we are people;
together we will be a poem.
We will create each other.
We shall be as complete
as a perfect villanelle,
whenever you come into
the refuge of my arms.

  ~mce

If you have a country
where you pay workers
ten dollars an hour
to do $25 worth of work,
you will end up
with a ten dollar country,

and a growing mass
of angry, frustrated,
hopeless people.

Think of a powder keg.
Now think of a match.

Now think of an explosion.

Boom!

   ~mce

When asked why I am a Buddhist,
I usually reply, "Because I'm
the kind of man who needs
a great many second chances."

The Dharma Wheel keeps spinning.

Turn after turn, life after life,
eternally, world without end:

another chance to get it right.
   ~mce

Thanksgiving.
That glorious day
of the year
when my family
gathered around the fowl
like the Waltons
and then acted
as if it had been stuffed
with ***.

mce

When life offers up
the inevitable two choices,
say *******,
invent a third,
and make it your own.
   ~mce

Tried it
for 30 years.

Not bad,
but not
for me.

Now I agree with
Katherine Hepburn
who never married:

"I prefer
to live nearby
and visit often."

The simplest
solution so often
the most elegant.
   ~mce

I Am 25**

Play Poem Video
With a love a madness for Shelley
Chatterton Rimbaud
and the needy-yap of my youth
has gone from ear to ear:
I HATE OLD POETMEN!
Especially old poetmen who retract
who consult other old poetmen
who speak their youth in whispers,
saying:--I did those then
but that was then
that was then--
O I would quiet old men
say to them:--I am your friend
what you once were, thru me
you'll be again--
Then at night in the confidence of their homes
rip out their apology-tongues
and steal their poems.

"Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result."*

The bullet that missed
on a sweltering 1972 day
remains the bullet
you fear the most,
the bullet still at large,
circling your life,
seeking a second chance
to lodge in your heart
that like all hearts
cannot stay lucky
forever.

Good morning,
gentle readers.

If I could,
I would
bring you
flowers and
latte and kiss
your blues
away.

Really.
    ~mce

Some days
nothing
is the most
eloquent
statement
you can
make.
Shout it
out.
- mce

My brothers and I
have a family saying
about getting drunk
or ******:
It's never too early
and it's never too late.

Although I have given
up power drinking
(age, hepatitis, liver, etc.),
I still, very occasionally,
enjoy getting drunk in the
middle of the day.

It is so warm, so soft,
so languorous.

And, of course, it is
frowned upon as weakness
by those of virtue.

But I have made a life out
of laughing at those frowns

and I hope I never stop.

  ~mce

Omnia *** pretio.

The door slammed
like a gunshot.

His life had
just left him.

No respite.

Now he had
to learn
how to live
with a whole
new life.

It's always
something.

The relentless education machine
***** in working class heroes
and churns our middle-class drones.
How willingly they fall in line
to register for that course,
unaware that getting an 'A'
in conformity leads directly
to an 'F' in satisfaction
and a life on the treadmill
to emptiness or nowhere at all.
Become a contrarian anarchist!
Jump off while there's still time.
Run for your life while you
still have one and it's still yours.

Sometimes I think;
therefore, sometimes I am.
Sometimes I’m not sure.
Those are the best times,
when uncertainty renders me
an electron only knowable
by observing where it’s been;
a statstical state of non-being
where all wonders coexist,
where *what I might be
is more real than what I am.
A dreamer dreaming dreams
in the presence of reason.

The day's inertia grips an old, cold body.
Too dangerous to doze while ice melts.
Early morning commotion at the brain station.
An unnamed bird tweets but lacks followers.
Gesticulation of unknown parts. Shake the
waking brain: dissolve the haze of logic.
A Day Of Decision: to shave or not to shave.
Curse all the rules you learned in schools.
The difficulty of simultaneously breaking out
and in. White boys with hoodie-heads clearly
ignorant of color wheels. Each word waffle
in the mind meaning means. This craft makes
crazy but air and fire clarify these lines.
Poets voluntary outlaws in American eyes.
Who needs shrink wrapped verses? You are
implicated in whatever you choose to read.
Do not interrupt and demand exegesis;
we do not deal in scripture or litany;
you may only get the interpretation of wolves.
Only this blinky moment of alphabet unites us.
You are changed by this reading
if you get my memeing or not.
Armageddon is your beard to scratch. Have at it.

I practice
Pai Lum Kung-Fu,
which at 63
may seem absurd.

Not to be
a tough guy,
those days
are over.

Just to feel
the flow.

A martial art
is like poetry:
you work
your whole life
and never
perfect it.

So what
if the lovely
seventeen-year-old
girl beside me
can stretch
like Gumby
and the lean, mean
twenty-something
kid always
finds my nose.

It is meditation
for the body.

When it works,
it is being,
not doing.

You don't do
the technique,
you are
the technique.

The joy is in
the effort,
not the result.

  ~mce

When you come of age
among Camaros, Mustangs,
GTO's and Challengers,
it seems somehow sad
to hear the pussified sound
of a Prius go puttering by
like Death driving
something sensible.

  ~mce

My laptop's
harddrive
sounds like gears
grinding.

I think
its time
will be soon.

How sadly mortal
these machines.

Announced
in glory,
soon they die
in obscurity.

I'd feel sad
if I didn't
hate them so.
  ~mce